How to take advantage of online contests to get more customers

Contests have always been a very powerful marketing tool when it comes to promoting the brand and increasing the number of customers, and in the case of the Internet, they are no exception. In fact, the effectiveness of the contests in the network, far exceeds that in any traditional medium, since, in all likelihood, it will reach more people and the cost will be much lower than it would have in the medium Off line.

Among its main advantages we find in the first place that contests, as a tool to attract fans, allow us to capture new records, and therefore the capture of emails, since people would be glad to provide us in exchange for a prize Or a benefit. This in turn, is very useful to us to be able to get new clients.

Secondly, it is also a tool to give good image. Any company that runs a contest and offers a good prize, is indirectly carrying out a good positioning of the brand, since users like companies that give away things of value.

And as third but not least, we have the advantage related to the viral aspect. The contests are a positive thing that people like to share, with the aim that our contacts or friends can participate in them too, and in this sense, social networks make it very forceful expansion.

Getting Records and not just fans

When we make a contest in a social network (for example Facebook), We should not be satisfied with requiring the user to become a fan of the page, as the only requirement of participation. What is really important is to be able to get your email, and for this, we will require you to register with it.

The importance of having your mail is that it greatly facilitates the contact with this user, as we make sure that the information that we want to get you arrives. Something that does not happen with the message that we put on the web, because we do not know if that person will see it or not.

On the other hand, in every contest there must be a winner, and the most effective way of notifying the winner that it has been, is through email.

Relevant prizes

When we make a competition we fall into the temptation to offer a very attractive and well valued prize, thinking that this way, we will get a large number of participants. But do not forget that what really matters in the contest is that we get new clients, so we are interested that the participants are people with many possibilities of being, that is, it is a target audience.

For example, if I have a make-up shop, and I promote a contest in which the prize is an iPad, I will get many participants of all tastes and interests, not people who end up buying my products. However, changing that prize for something like a makeup kit or a gift card of 200 euros to spend in my store, I will be making sure that the participants are people who are really interested in my products and even come to try them out. So the public will be smaller, but much more objective and susceptible to be captured.

Paying attention to the jury that chooses the prize

What I advise is a mixed solution where, when choosing the winner of a contest, intervene on the one hand the public vote, and on the other, that of a specialized jury.

If we let the winner result from who has scored the most, or more, I like it, we will be allowing it to be in a non-legal way, because there are always artificial ways that the participant can get more votes than would be physically fit. This is the case of creating fake accounts for example.

The best way to avoid that is to set up a specialized jury. The disadvantage of this, is that the participants, due to the ignorance of who forms it or how it works, can distrust the impartiality of this mechanism.

Hence, the most useful formula is to apply a mixed solution. First we can say that the 10 finalists to get the prize will be decided by popular vote, and of those 10, will be a winner decided by the specialized jury.

Promotion campaign

As we pointed out at the beginning of the article, the contest is something that enjoys a great viral capacity, but this does not mean that by making a contest in a social network, it will be spread miraculously by said network.

You need to do a marketing campaign, As we would do to promote any other product.

For example, if we make a contest on facebook we must use the promotional tools available on this portal: sponsored ads, sponsored stories, notification of the competition by email … in short, any tool that makes people aware That the contest is working.

Then the viral capacity we are talking about will surface, but the first impulse is to give it to us through all these online and offline advertising tools.

Measuring the results

As we have already mentioned, the fact of making a contest has goals such as getting more customers and increase the benefits, So it is imperative to carry out a measurement of the results obtained.

For this there are very powerful tools, which not only measure the number of participants, but also what happened after the contest in terms of our goals.

After completing the contest, it is assumed that the number of emails in our database will have increased. Well, it is necessary to attack this database by sending a newsletter that informs all our products or news and see how that database responds to our mail, that is, if they buy our product.

Nothing will have served to carry out our contest, if we do not make a postconsonantal, that is, a measurement of the results that show us the subsequent effects on our objectives after the conclusion of the event. For this there are very powerful tools, which not only measure the number of participants, but also what happened after the contest in terms of our goals. After completing the contest, it is assumed that the number of emails in our database will have increased. Well, it is necessary to attack this database by sending a newsletter that informs all our products or news and see how that database responds to our mail, that is, if they buy our product.